Second Place is ours or Play-off here we come!

October 8th, 2011 | by: aron | Comments Off

When the referee blew the final whistle last night, I breathed a big sigh of relief. It was a miserable game from start to finish: a game where there were very few positive moments from a Swedish perspective. Lets start with the good stuff though. Somewhere around ten minutes in Sebastian Larsson makes a run into the middle, puts his arms up and yells for Källström to give him the ball on the run, Källström does just that and after beating the offside trap Larsson thumps the ball on a half-volley into the ground and then watches it bounce past the oncoming Finnish keeper. 1-0 and all is suddenly well in the world, well except in Hungary where an entire nation is watching their chances for the Euro 2012 party disappear. After the first goal, the game took on some more sinister form. It started to pelt down rain and the wind whipped its way across the pitch.

Roman Eremenko, the man of the match and worth whatever his Russian team payed for him, decided that he was going to take his time in the midfield and with his magical passing foot seek out his fellow attacking Finns. The first thing I kept thinking as I listened to the radio broadcast and watched the delayed “live” stream from Al Jazeera was why was no one pressuring him. Time and time again Sweden let him stroll into our half and pass at will. The only thing that kept it from being a 2-1 lead for Finland was that they don´t have good finishers. Pukki was good and he was working hard for that goal but it just didn´t come. At the end of the first half I breathed my first sigh of relief.

The second half got off to a roaring start when Lustig won back a ball deep in Finish territory, passed it to Larsson who sent it on to Ibrahimovic. Now Ibrahimovic looked bad the whole game. He didn´t run much, he didn´t pressure, and above all he didn´t seem to give a fuck that this was a must win game, but this once he was standing in the right place and blasted the shot on goal and the Finnish keeper blocked it with a beautiful save but couldn´t keep it under control and there was our new left back Martin Olsson to put it into the back of the net. Behrang Safari and Oscar Wendt must be scratching their heads and wondering how in the hell they are ever going to get their position back when Olsson did what he did.

The rest of the game was one Finnish half chance after another. Finally, with about fifteen minutes to go, they got one in off a corner but that was it. The Final score was 2-1 for Sweden and we are at least going to the play-off, which is what everyone had expected a year and a half ago. We have thus achieved the bare minimum. We didn´t do it in style though and to be honest the only players who get a decent grade are Olsson, Isaksson, and Larsson (but only for the goal and the assist). The rest of the match was jittery and there was plenty of arguing between the players, which is not something you want to see in an important game like this. Now I can go on and on and complain about a lot of stuff, but the fact is that it isn´t all that easy to win in Helsinki as many other teams have shown (most recently the Netherlands escaped with a 2-1 win here as well).

With this win we guaranteed ourselves the second place and the play off. That means that it won´t matter what Hungary and Finland do on Tuesday evening: they are out! Sweden on the other hand still have a chance to get the best second place finish and the automatic spot that that guarantees.  We “only” have to beat the Netherlands on Tuesday in Stockholm. The good news is this: the Netherlands have already won the group and therefore don´t have the motivation (but plenty of young guns looking to prove their worth) and we don´t have an out of shape Zlatan on our team (one yellow card too many and he will not be available on Tuesday). I love watching Zlatan play, but he is clearly out of shape at the moment or is lacking motivation and we need everyone at 100% for Tuesday. We need to go all in and raise the level of play by a lot. Can we do it? I am not so sure, but we damn well better try.

Oh and the whole Rasmus Elm is the future thing? He had a pretty rotten game and looked like he didn´t have a clue about what to do. Wouldn´t be surprised if he starts on the bench on Tuesday. I was really hoping he would prove himself this time, but he let a lot of us down. I will write a preview for the Netherlands game on Sunday night or Monday morning.